I Write Letters

Dear Pitchers of Self-Righteous, Sanctimonious Victim-Blaming Health Woo:

You make me crazy with your assertions that people's poor health is totally, 100% their own fault for choosing to live "toxic" (conveniently ambiguously undefined!) lives how if we'd all just detox we could live in wellbeing and harmony and all fart rainbows. You piss me off for the same reason all the people still yammering about things like The Secret and the so-called Law of Attraction piss me off: that you are 100% responsible for everything that happens to you and that you are in 100% control, and if you don't have what you want or bad shit comes your way it's your own damn fault so just change it already and quit yer bitching and victim talk and take control problem solved thanks that will be 3 low, low, LOW payments of $29.95.

I want to say a lot more about this later, as it really deserves its own(additional) post, but for now, I want to get down that I understand the inclination to want to control your world. I do. I want it just as much as anyone else. But your assertions are patently ridiculous. And it reeks, reeks, REEKS of economic and class privilege to aver that this is categorically, uncritically so. It's like telling the poor to go and eat cake if they can't find bread to eat. Seriously.

So, for the article I read this morning (one in a series which I also hope to get to eventually--I've reached my critical bullshit breaking point) opining that health is up to the individual, I agree and disagree. Partly on the basis of the author's shaky at best "grasp" of the science of diseases like cancer, straight up. But also, even presupposing the author's premise that health is a choice and unhealthy people get cancer because they choose to live such a filthy, toxic lifestyle, I say your privilege is showing again.

I am a privileged person. I grew up in a white, middleclass, educated family, with two grandmothers who were so old school they were hippies before hippies existed. We ate almost exclusively homegrown fruits and vegetables, whole grains, weren't allowed sugar or soda or even juice on a regular basis (except, everything else as preservative and additive free as possible. We never ate out and never ate fast food. Not allowed to watch TV and "forced" to go outside and play in our vast yard or safe suburban neighborhood or even more vast (and safe for kids to roam free) open space behind our house. My mother even made much of my baby food herself with our Foley mill. I grew up in a small, rural town with most of its nature intact and unpolluted/uncontaminated by industry. Etc, etc.

I am lucky to come from GENERATIONS of such people on both sides of my family. Read: we have no family history of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke, etc. Nearly everyone lives to be at least 90. Yet, my own mother, who was also subject to this healthy genetic pedigree and was raised in the same privilege and was so conscious of health that she made my own baby food, was herself diagnosed at the age of 34 with cancerous tumors in her heart (yeah, wrap your head around that one, it's extremely rare even in the medical literature) that aggressively metastasized, well, everywhere and was dead about 3 months later. And children cancer--are you seriously going to tell me their parents brought that shit on by insisting on living a life of shitty food and environmental toxins? Or crappy, negative thoughts? Really?

I now am lucky enough to live in a sweet little neighborhood in south central Denver in a well-cared for house amongst many well-cared for houses, far enough from the freeway or messes of high tension wires that I need to worry about such things. We have an excellent water supply. On Sundays in summer I can walk to the Old South Pearl farmer's market, and when I can't I can afford to shop (if I'm picky) at either Whole Foods or Vitamin cottage which I can either walk or ride to. As I shop in such places, surrounded by organic whole foods many of which are local and most of which are sustainably produced, I notice that pretty much everyone shopping there is like me. They always are. I live this way because I care, because I am conscious that it DOES matter what food and lifestyle choices we make. And because I have privilege, I am able to CHOOSE in the first place, not to mention make fully informed choices.

Even though I have been quite poor at various times in my perpetual student lifestyle, I recognize that I am still privileged. Even the times when I was happy to eat rice and dried beans and oatmeal for a few weeks just to have something to put in my belly I'm still privileged. Because I know it won't always be this way. Because I have the knowledge and experience of taking good care of my health and making good choices. Because I am not so debased that even in (especially in!) Los Angeles I was able to afford to live in a neighborhood that was safe, and quiet, and green, and close to the ocean where natural breezes helped dispel some of the hazardous pollution, and safe places to recreate were all around me. Healthy people surrounded me and supported and praised my decision to choose health. It makes a huge difference. Does it ever occur to anyone to ask why everyone at their yoga classes and such is almost always from a certain cultural and economic station?

When I worked at Scottel, I shared an office with a young woman who had a 7-year-old and a 2-year-old. She and I would talk about them from time to time, and the trials and tribulations that come with raising kids. She and her husband were basically just starting out with fairly entry-level jobs, trying to raise 2 little ones in an expensive city. They lived in a little apartment where it wasn't safe to send kids out on the streets to play unless you watched them like a hawk, so they spent a lot of indoor time, watching more TV than she would like. And since her husband was all but a child himself in the kitchen and she worked full-time and neither of them were raised with the best traditions of food choices, it was tough for her to make sure everyone ate right all the time. Etc, etc. Tough going for a 23-year-old. I understand her frustration.

So my proposition is this: yes we live in a toxic shitty world. Yes, it is possible sometimes to choose whether (and to what extent) you will live in it. But at some point you have to acknowledge that not everyone has those choices, or at least that range of choices. For millions it's not as simple as telling them to quit eating conventionally grown produce and fast food, and get outside and get some exercise and start a meditation practice in the 5 minutes you may have to yourself as a single parent holding down 3 jobs to make ends meet. And I haven't even started on access to decent healthcare, or problems endemic to our current system of healthcare as predicated on a disease-management model vs. one based on prevention, but whatever, as we say in grad school academia, "that is beyond the scope of this discussion."

At some point, if you are serious about helping people, if you really, truly, REALLY give a shit then you have to acknowledge institutionalized forces (that are bigger than any individual) of economics, of public policy, of FOOD POLICY in this country which SUCKS tremendously, of racism, classism, sexism, able-ism, all the other -ism's that dictate and constrain the choices people make every day about how they negotiate their world. And once you do that, of course, you become dangerous, and radical in the most traditional meaning of the word. And not everyone is ready or willing to go there, to see that much or call for something so big and comprehensive. It means going through the looking glass.

It means acknowledging your own unearned privilege and maybe even giving some of it up. It means committing to paying with your life (not in death, necessarily, but in myriad other ways) in order to continue your work for wider goals of economic and social justice for everyone. It means considering that there are barriers in the way of everyone living your so-called simple universal "cosmic laws". It means having an honest discussion about our country's food policy and making sincere efforts to support community gardens and CSA's and the like that are actually trying to empower people and communities instead of just telling them to buy better food and get some exercise, fatty or you'll get all the health problems you so richly deserve (ah, fat hatred apologia--yet another series of future posts!)

And if you're not there yet, that's ok, I totally get it. I wasn't always where I am, and boy have I been painfully called out on the carpet for my ignorant assumptions over the years. Wanted to sink through the floor and die, I did. It's a process, and we are all in it, and it takes a lifetime. It's not always comfortable, and sometimes it's depressing and even scary, and you may occasionally find yourself paralyzed with despair. You'd be in some good company, believe me. But you move forward with it because you care, because you are committed. You can only start where you are and go from there. But goddamn. Be upfront about it.

And until you are willing to be that comprehensive and self-conscious, kindly take your self-righteous, healthier-than-thou sanctimony and shove it up your ass.

Love,
LoLo